On the one hand, I admired EMC’s sales success. Winning big is fun. And I carried the pigskin in my day (though not very well…).

But sometimes winning isn’t sustainable if your entire corporate culture is built around one image of success. EMC learned that lesson. As did Cabletron (the former networking giant), which had a high-octane sales team but stumbled at the hands of Cisco in the 1990s.

As the economy continues to disrupt (to put it politely…) transportation, auto, real estate and other verticals, let’s hope MSPs evaluate that talent, and strive to bring a range of expertise into their organizations.

We’ve found that people who have sold telephone services, whether LDC, tele-sales, or the like do very well selling managed services. I’d imagine, however, and plan to explore Joe’s suggestion regarding real estate sales and auto sales people for my next search.

Definitely, techies are not the way to go. EMC is a fine example. During their heyday, they used to hire sales execs based on whether they played college football. The result: an aggressive sales force trained by EMC to go out and sell, sell, sell. Failure was not an option. Ugly, but profitable…

I told him to to stop looking for people in the tech industry. We have found that the more technical a sales person is the less likely they are to succeed at selling services. The last conversation you want your sales rep having with the CEO of a prospect is how cool the new server hardware is that you are proposing.

You need to find somone that knows how to sell. That is the skill you are looking for not their knowledge of technology.